She gave up sucking him actively, and let his length rest on her tongue, keeping him deep inside. He lowered his mouth to her nipple, brushing his tongue along it, the same inquisitive touch he’d used elsewhere, and then opening his lips and taking the sensitive point lightly between his teeth.
Tiny sparks of impatient want cascaded through her. If he kept that up, she thought she might come, but she didn’t want to. Not yet, not without feeling him enter her first. She gave him another long, slow suck, tasting the sweetly salted want at the very head, and then said, ‘I don’t think I can wait any more.’
‘Well, that’s not good enough.’ His fingers worked against her skin, small pinches that made her ache and arch.
‘I ... can’t wait any more ... please.’
‘Better.’ He nipped the corner of her nipple, sending more sparks along her, then grinned up at her. ‘Then I think now would be a great time to go off for a while and leave you here, naked and panting.’
‘Jerk,’ she said. The teasing made her hotter, not cooler, her insides flowing with a liquid want.
‘You did it first.’ He pulled her toward him, laying the length of his body over her own, slipping the very tip of his cock against her wetness. She ached for him to be all the way inside her, and yet she savoured the sensation of the tease, like slowly unwrapping a gift.
‘You left me here,’ he said, each word punctuated with another too-soft stroke of his tip against her. ‘Naked, hard, dreaming about having your mouth against mine, seeing you naked for the first time, doing this ...’
He dropped his mouth to her breasts, first one then the other, sucking them hard and deep, her hips bucking up in a tangled response that started at her nipples and worked its way down to the very spot where his cock met her skin.
‘I’d like to fuck you,’ he said. That question, not a question she was beginning to adore.
‘I’d like you to fuck me, too,’ she said.
‘But ...’
‘There’s a but?’
‘There’s a wonderful butt,’ he said, grinning. ‘But there’s also the fact that I was not prepared to fall into someone’s arms. Or into their body, either.’
She came back into her body for a moment, wishing that she hadn’t. ‘Is this a big emotional talk? Because if so, I’d really prefer to have it post-sex.’
‘This is the “I’ve never been a very good Boy Scout” talk.’
It took her a second to get it.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Condoms. Top drawer.’
He found one and tried to put it on, getting it backwards, rolling his eyes. ‘They should make these things with “This Side Up” signs.’
She took the rubber from him and flipped it, laughing. ‘Let me.’ Condoms weren’t the sexiest things to fuck with, but she actually liked this part, pushing the material down over a long hard cock, watching his erection become encased in see-through, the way his cock twitched in her hand as she unrolled it over him. It was a beautiful thing between her hands, and touching it like this made her want him inside her even more.
Clearly, he felt the same way, because he teased her with his fingers for only a moment longer before he pushed her down gently to kneel between her thighs. He put his hands under her ass and lifted her up. He entered her with a sharp push that took her breath away, and fitted into her with a sensation that would have been too much if not for how wet she was. He started slow, pulling back with a heated groan that tugged a ragged sound of pleasure from her, returning to fill her until he was buried deep within her, his hips melding to her own.
He kissed her as he fucked her. It started soft and slow, controlled, and then moved into something else entirely, their mouths connecting hard and fast on each stroke, a clash of teeth and lips that would have hurt in any other circumstance, but in this case just added to the pleasure, to the urgent need that Kallie had to feel him fill her again and again.
He pulled away, eliciting a moan from Kallie. ‘What?’
‘Flip, please.’ It was a request, but one that he was fulfilling even as he spoke, turning her over and lifting her from the bed. ‘So I can touch you while I fuck you,’ he said, as though he were answering a question she hadn’t asked. ‘And look at your ass too, of course.’
She was about to make a snide remark, but his arm slid around her, his fingers finding her clit again, remembering the things she’d responded to earlier, touching her at just the right speed, keeping time to his strokes. And when she opened her mouth to say something, only a keened moan came out, a quiet release of his name even as her body released around him, the strength of her orgasm surprising her into sharp shudders and soft whimpers.
‘Kallie,’ he whispered, biting lightly at the edge of her ear, and she might have come again, just from that, she wasn’t sure, because he was releasing into her, long slow strokes and the sound of her name again and again, and she couldn’t tell any more what was her body and what was his.
Chapter Seven
‘CAN WE TALK ABOUT what happened earlier?’ he asked after, stroking Kallie’s hair, wishing he could photograph the way the colours intermingled, the way a single curl fell across her cheekbone. He didn’t want to ruin the moment with serious questions, but he knew two things about himself: one, his curiosity was going to get the best of him and two, he was falling for this girl and falling hard, and he needed to know what, exactly, was waiting for him at the bottom of that fall.
Kallie snuggled up against him, fitting perfectly against his body, her head resting on his shoulder. When she opened her eyes, he was shocked as he always was, at the dark beauty of her gaze, how it was possible to see her intelligence and warmth in the colours alone.
She took a long time before she answered, and he could see she was struggling with her word choice. ‘Safe Haven has been my dream since I was little. It’s something that my nana and I used to talk about. This was her land, her house, her barns. When she died a few years ago, she left it all to me so that I could start Safe Haven.’
She closed her eyes and in that single gesture, he saw so much about her. He could picture her for a moment as a young girl, in love with her grandmother, in love with helping animals, building a dream even at that age. He swallowed down his first instinct, which was to say something helpful but stupid, and just held her tighter while she talked.
‘She thought she was giving me a gift, and she was, really. But the land wasn’t totally paid for – I think she thought it was – but when they did the legal stuff, they realised she still owed a lot. Well, that I owed a lot.’
‘When was that?’ he asked. Her grief, while palpable in her big eyes, didn’t seem fresh, but it was hard to tell. Everyone carried that differently.
‘Almost a year.’
‘And you’ve kept the farm going until now?’
Her gazed shifted away and she found something on the blanket to pick at while she talked.
‘Sort of. No, not really. I was seeing someone who was helping me. Financially at least. Emotionally, not so much.’
‘The man with the really big truck?’
She laughed. ‘You say truck like most people say penis. But yes. Him.’
‘And?’
‘And it wasn’t working and we ended it and now ...’ she swallowed loud enough for him to hear it. He put his hand over hers, forced her fingers to stop picking at the invisible blanket lint. ‘Well, he’s offered me a way to keep the farm going. I have to take it.’
‘A money offer.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And.’
The “and” was a complete sentence in itself somehow. At least, he thought he knew everything that it entailed. Darrin wanted to prompt her for more, but he didn’t want to push her. After all, what could he offer her? He had money, but that felt presumptuous. A trip out of town on his motorcycle? A new puppy? She clearly loved the land and the farm. He couldn’t take her away from it. And he couldn’t stay. He had a job that was waiting for him at the end of his travels. A job on the oppos
ite coast.
Not to mention, what was he even thinking? He’d known her for ... he realised he had to count back ... he felt like he’d known her forever, but in truth, it was no time at all. Not even a day. Certainly not enough to feel the way he was feeling. She was a stranger, he reminded himself, and yet he felt like he knew her better than people he’d known for years, for a decade even.
Instead of pushing her, he did the only thing he could think of that might help: he buried his hands softly in her curls and pulled her against him, let her bury her face in his chest, and he held her so tight he thought she might not be able to breathe OK. It wasn’t until he felt her sobbing against him quietly, the crying shaking her whole body, that he realised she could definitely breathe, but she was definitely not OK.
He held her until she fell asleep, until her breathing quieted to nothing. And then he lay next to her and watched her, the beauty of her in this rare moment of quiet stillness, how she was always moving except for now, when her body curled into a soft, silent curve against him. As always, his fingers itched for his camera, but he resisted, worrying he’d wake her, and instead he just soaked it in. He didn’t move until he heard Gauntlet pad into the bedroom, his soft whines clear requests for sharing the bed. Darrin rolled over and pulled the puppy up, settling his warm form between the two of them.
Gauntlet licked Kallie’s sleeping face, making Darrin laugh.
‘I agree, Gaunt. She’s totally lickable.’
She was more than lickable. She was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman. And she was completely unattainable.
It was dawn, past dawn, and Kallie wanted nothing more than to stay snuggled against the warm sleeping man who shared her bed. But that was the truth of a farm, any farm, but especially of a rescue farm: There were not enough hours in the day and staying in bed meant a hundred things that didn’t get done. And layered into that, a sense of panic and sorrow that she didn’t know how much longer Safe Haven would be fully hers. That thought alone, was enough to pull her fully awake and out of bed.
Still, she couldn’t resist stealing a kiss from Darrin as he lay on his back, his breathing deep and regular, the sound turning into a soft murmur as her lips touched his. She had come to love his smell lately, and she leaned in to draw her nose along the curve of his neck, inhaling. It was only a second later that she realised why he smelled so good to her; he’d been here a couple of days already and he’d taken on the scent of the farm, of sweet hay and clean animals and cold water. He’d begun to smell like home.
Kallie pushed herself from bed, trying not to wake him, unnerved at the realisation. He was supposed to be, just for now. Just until he was better and gone, just until she could bear to do what needed to happen next with Erik. But the longer he stayed, the more she realised that she didn’t want anything to do with Eric’s proposal. It was depressing, being stuck. And scary. Darrin was a fun diversion, but that’s all he was. All he could be.
‘Where you going?’ he asked, his voice thick with sleep and want. She stopped at the door, unable to resist looking back over her shoulder. He was snuggled beneath the blankets, only his face peeking out. Those bright blue eyes, still half-asleep but somehow shimmering with want. For her. At her.
‘Chores,’ she said, but already she was rationalising things in her head. If she crawled back in bed with him for just another couple of minutes, they could ...
‘Come and fuck me first?’ he asked, one hand sneaking out of the blankets and beckoning at her.
‘Hmm ...’ she said. ‘I’ll make you a deal.’
He squinted at her, eyes narrowing slightly, but his smile growing. ‘I like deals ... especially ones that involve me inside you.’
‘I’ll come back to bed if you’ll help me with chores later.’
‘OK,’ he said, too quickly.
‘You don’t even know what that means, do you?’
‘It means I get to entice you back into bed and ravage your delicious body for a little while, right?’
‘I’m just going to say yes,’ she said. ‘We can work out the details later.’ She slid back beneath the covers, snuggling up to his body, laughing when she felt his cock nudge her thigh. ‘Ooh,’ she said, rolling him over so that she could sit on his hips, nestling the length of his cock between her thighs. She curled her hips against him, loving the quiet, sleepy breaths that issued from him.
Lifting herself up, she stroked his length, then lowered herself down slowly, letting it fill her as his hips lifted upward to meet her, and push into her. Darrin’s hands took hold of her hips, tight, his nails digging in lightly as he stroked her above him. His eyes were closed, his mouth half-open as he groaned in time to their movements, shuddering lightly beneath her. He was so beautiful, the width of his shoulders, the jaw that tightened each time he pushed up full into her.
‘Open your eyes,’ she whispered, her own voice half-lost in lust and need and pleasure.
He did as she asked, looking up at her, the blue of his gaze heated and coiled. ‘Kallie,’ he whispered, harsh and needing, the very sound of her name becoming a thing that carried his pleasure.
‘Please,’ she said, and he reached out to touch her, one hand cupping her breast, his thumb rubbing soft circles over the sensitive peak of her nipple, the other sliding between them, the very tip of his finger lightly stroking her clit.
‘Kallie,’ he said again. ‘Come for me ...’
And she couldn’t help it, couldn’t have stopped herself even if she wanted to, the way he filled her and touched her and circled her and most of all, saw her. She called his name, hard and sudden, as the pleasure overtook her. He drove up into her, hard and fast through her orgasm, until he was coming himself, calling out her name again and again into the morning light.
Chapter Eight
IT ONLY TOOK A few more days before Darrin felt stronger on his feet. Slow, but able to keep up with the bumbling puppy at least. And he’d been helping Kallie around the farm, which was helping, in some odd way that he couldn’t articulate. It felt good to be doing work that made his muscles sore, even if he didn’t always know exactly what he was doing.
Kallie had taken off early for something farmish – he wasn’t sure he understood all that she did to keep the place afloat, but he did understand that it was a lot – and so he wandered around the house, touching things here and there, picking up books, putting them down. He didn’t feel restless, exactly, but more as though there was something he should be doing, something that kept slipping through his fingers.
A glance outside the window brought it all home to him. Kallie had returned while he’d been pottering, and now she stood in the field, surrounded by the horses she’d rescued. The wind was high, and they pranced around her, full of energy. At some unknown thing, they gathered as a group and took off running, tails and manes whipping into waves. They reminded him of Kallie when she rode or even just moved through the world, wild in a tameable way. It was something that they always aimed for with models, but there it was something they’d had to create. Here, it was real. Kallie was real.
He hadn’t touched his camera in three weeks, and he fumbled for it now, pulling it from his travel bag in the living room.
‘Come on, pup.’ Gauntlet, always ready go to outside, took little urging before he was waiting at the door, tail thumping against Darrin’s leg.
Outside, the wind had picked up, sending leaves cascading around them as they made their way to the pasture. There was so much to photograph here. He’d wanted to shoot Kallie, of course, since the moment he’d seen her coming out of the barn. And every time he’d seen her since then, whether she was working or sleeping or, especially, when she was fucking, grinning at him wickedly over her shoulder, or taking him into her mouth, or even just that moment when orgasm rolled over her, her mouth open, eyes half-closed, their hue darkening in pleasure.
But there was all of this too. The horses playing at being wild in the wind. Kallie in the centre, the thing they left and returne
d to in a way that reminded him of children playing, coming back to check that all was well. He didn’t think she’d seen him; her back was mostly to him, the curve of her ass beneath her winter coat, the length of her hair mimicking the horses’.
He anchored himself carefully against the wooden fence and started shooting. Everything caught his attention. The things that moved, the things that didn’t. But most of all, what filled his lens was Kallie. Her laugh as one of the horses came up to her and head-butted her almost hard enough to knock her over. That moment when she caught sight of him, and realised that he’d been shooting her, and she stuck her tongue out at him from across the field. Even the way she strode toward him, her stride fake-angry, the half-grin on her face giving her away. He was suddenly glad he’d shot these; it was at least something he could take back home with him, a reminder that there was a place where things – and people – were real.
‘What, pray tell, are you doing out here?’ she asked. ‘It’s cold.’
He let the camera fall against his chest, suddenly realising how long he’d been out here. His fingers were stiff from the wind. ‘Would it be too woo-woo to say I’m finding myself? Or maybe my passion?’
She leaned against him, bringing the smell of cold apples with her, kissing his chin lightly. ‘If this is your passion, I’d say it’s rather frigid.’
‘One of my passions,’ he said, surprising himself even as he said it, because it was true. Kallie was becoming a passion. Or maybe igniting his passion. Or maybe a little of both.
‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s time to explore one of your non-freezing passions then.’
He curved his hands around her ass and pulled her as close as he could around the bulk of the camera. ‘Like hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows?’
Her laugh, that surprised delight that bubbled from her. That was something he couldn’t capture with his camera. No matter how much he wanted to. So many things he was going to have to leave behind. The sound of her, the smell, the feel of her around his fingers, inside his mouth.
Safe Haven (Xcite Romance) Page 5